Modular seat units of furniture, commonly called "pit groups" in the trade, have, solely because of style, convenience, and utility, become a major factor in furniture sales during the past five years. In fact, in some markets, the volume of modular furniture sales exceeds that of traditional sofas, love seats, and lounge chairs.
Manufacturers of modular seat units have, with the aid of skilled designers, achieved outstanding style renditions. This achievement figures prominently in the sales of these pit groups. It is said in the trade that all pit groups look comfortable. It is also known in the trade, however, that no pit groups presently manufactured feel truly comfortable.
This is because severe difficulties are encountered in modular furniture seat base construction, imposed primarily by the inherent nature of a pit group. One factor is that their styling normally calls for them to be at somewhat lower sitting height than traditional sofas, love seats, or lounge chairs. The second problem, until now virtually unsolvable, is caused by the fact that among the modular units are both one-arm and no-arm sofas, love seats, and chairs, and even bumper-units with no arms or backs.
These modular units of the group can be, and normally are, arranged in many configurations: semirectangles, semicircular, horseshoe-shaped, inner and outer triangles, and so on, limited only by the imagination of the owner. It is apparent that in many arrangements sitters will sit facing not only forward in the normal way, but also 90.degree. to either the left or right side, to the rear, or even diagonally; i.e., "omnidirectionally". Thus, pit groups require equal sitting comfort and support in all of five sitting directions.
Obviously, this means that the configurations of normal spring seat bases simply will not work, as they are all normally designed to give downward deflection to a marked degree at the back rail, and virtually no deflection, or a very little, at the front rail. Thus, if a person were to sit facing sideways on a chair, for example, with a normal spring base he would lean most uncomfortably toward either his left side or his right side, depending upon where the seat back would normally be.
The problem is magnified even more in modulars by the fact that women often sit in them curled up sideways with both legs tucked up under them. The need in modular seating is three-fold: first, to improve the present gross-substandard level of sitting comfort in general; second, to provide acceptable sitting comfort omni-directionally, regardless of the direction in which the sitter is sitting; third, to provide this omni-directional seating without objectionable "lean-out" regardless of the direction of sitting.
No present seat base constructions used in pit groups meet these needs. Further, no normal seat base constructions giving desired comfort levels in deflection, resilience, and support as used in regular upholstered living room furniture, can be installed in pit groups under the operational constraints and performance requirements noted.
To sum up, pit groups call for a seat base which gives substantially uniform sitting comfort and support circumferentially, regardless of the direction in which the sitter is facing, and without "lean-out" in any direction.
All modular furniture presently uses either a polywebbing pulled tight, de-arced flat sinuous spring bands pulled tight, a wire grid or mesh pulled tight, or in some cases even a flat piece of plywood under the cushion. Regardless of which of these is used, however, the net result is the same: an uncomfortable, relatively unyielding seat that would never be accepted in traditional love seats, sofas, or living room lounge chairs.
This is obviously not in the best interest of either the manufacturers or the purchasing public. However, because of the necessity to provide for omnidirectional seating manufacturers have had to deliberately sacrifice normal standards of comfort.
In order to give some small degree of initial softness, therefore, manufacturers have been forced to go to the expense of using unusually thick cushioning materials, or premium costly materials. In fact, however, this does not solve the problem, or even alleviate it to any substantial degree, because a person still sinks through the cushion and winds up on the uncomfortably hard, virtually unyielding, flat underbase.